Cremation.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 250, 25 August 1874, Page 7

Cremation.

COOL CONSIDERATION OR A HOT SUBJECT. I hardly think,.upon the whole, that I am in favour of crepgitum. TThe, process seems tome to be so frightfully' wasteful. At the same time, I am" ready to admit that the dead might be used much more profitably than they are nowv*, If a man must be buried, Jet him be planted where he will make something grow. 71 rmtfemberthat Cass jlbenny of •Vineland, Now Jersey, onee laid his grandmother under hiar grape vine, .and by carefully wat'ring hq: twice a day he secured a a crop of fifteen bushels of Black Hamburgs. The subject' came up in the Agricultural Society subsequently, and there was a question whether a grandmother was the, only female relative''thilt could be efficaciously used, and whether it should be a paternal or maternal grandmother. Casselbenny explained that he had.known a maiden aunt or second cousin to do equally as well, and he had his step-father among the roots of his mammoth gooseberry bush, with every prospect of a superb - crop. Very particular inquiries were made by several members concerning the availability of mothers-in-law, and a man named Johnson said he had been married four times, and had used all his mothers-in law in.improving the asparagus bed ; ho took the first prize for asparagus : t eight country fairs. Then the meeting suddenly adjourned, and fifteen mothers-in -law in Vineland died during the succeeding week. And then there Is the skeletons. The Esquimaux make skates out of the collar-bones of their departed friends, and I remember that Hufnagle, of Mauch Chunk, having lost his leg by a railway accident, took out the bone and had it made up into a clarionet, with which, ho used to gu found serenading a woman who refused to love him. He always played in a minor key, and they say up at Mauch Chunk, that he whistled the most heartrending music out of that bone. When old Mackintosh of Darby died, his widow had Ids framework taken out, and sho worked the whole of it up into knife handles and trouser buttons, which she gave to her second husband when they were married. The hottest kind of water never hurt those knives, and the suspenders that wouldn’t stay buttoned on those buttons were admitted by everybody to be just no suspdndors at all. But 1 admit there is something disagreeable about Bus form of utilisation, and therefore 1 rather incline to favour the plan’ of turning inanimate remains into illuminating gas by consuming them in retort. This, I understand, is practicable ; and it world bo, I should think, inexpressibly consoling to a man to sit and read the paper comfortably by the light of Ids deceased uncle, and to have the satisfaction of knowing that tire said relative had not been run through a meter at so much a thousand foot. If would be beautiful to illuminate the parlour with a departed hired girl, or to turn off your half-brother before going to bed. And think what splendid gas a Congressman would make. \?o might have a law appropriating dead Congressmen to the Light House Board for use on the const. This class of persons wmld then have the consolation of knowing that they would lie much more useful after death than they are during life.,— Jkinhiii j Veras.